1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communication, and more particularly, to an operation method for searching for a cell in a wireless communication system and a device for supporting the same.
2. Related Art
3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) LTE (long term evolution) which is improvement of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) has been introduced as 3GPP release 8. The 3GPP LTE uses OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access) in a downlink, and uses SC-FDMA (Single Carrier-frequency division multiple access) in an uplink. The 3GPP LTE adopts MIMO (multiple input multiple output) having maximum four antennas. Recently, a discussion of 3GPP LTE-A (LTE-Advanced) which is the evolution of the 3GPP LTE is in progress.
A micro cell, a femto cell, a pico cell, and the like which have small service areas may be installed at a predetermined position of a macro cell having wide coverage. As such, a network in which the macro cell and the small cells coexist may be called a heterogeneous network. Traffic that may be concentrated in the macro cell may be offloaded to the small cells through the small cells installed in the coverage of the macro cell. This may reduce the load for the macro cell and increase capacity of the network.
User equipment in such a network is positioned in the coverage of the macro cell, and may detects small cells in operation at different frequencies and perform measurement of the detected small cells. The user equipment may use a measurement gap in order to perform inter-frequency measurement, and the use of the measurement gap may cause service interruption. In a heterogeneous network environment, a lot of small cells may exit in the coverage of the macro cell, and performing the measurement for all the small cells causes the service interruption, and as a result, the quality of the service provided to the user equipment may seriously deteriorate.